


'Everything'

by livelyandcolorful



Category: Halt and Catch Fire
Genre: 10broad36, F/F, and a lesbian, donna is a hopeless yet somehow still practical romantic, halt and catch fire 2x06
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 21:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9677495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/livelyandcolorful/pseuds/livelyandcolorful
Summary: While the rest of the Mutineers enjoy a day off, Donna (and Lev) stay behind at the house to do some necessary maintenance. Joe visits briefly before the staff returns (set after the events of 2x06 and before the beginning of 2x07).





	

Donna said she would hang the cabinets and wrap the wiring herself, Donna thought to herself, as she hung the last of the cabinets. She smiled at her literary reference, but then realized glumly that she had no one to share it with. Not that the quiet hadn't helped. It had been a surreal few days since the trip to the clinic, and something about the eerie stillness of the Mutiny house without its staff there felt appropriate. Sending everyone away for the day, shutting everything down, pulling all the cables and surge protectors from the walls, starting over and fixing everything had felt even more satisfying than Donna had anticipated.

It was quiet enough to hear light footsteps -- too light to be Lev, the only other human being in the house. The footsteps came out into the hall, just outside the office, where Donna was working. She turned around, hands still in the cabinet, to see Joe MacMillan.

Donna turned back to the cabinet and fought the impulse to say something unkind about how vampires only have to be invited into a house once. Instead, she took a deep breath and said, "In this country, it's customary to ring the doorbell or knock on the door of another person's home or business, to politely request entry."

"Ah. I'll keep it in mind for next time," Joe deadpanned.

Donna glared into the cabinet at 'next time'.

"I'd like to speak to Cameron," he said.

"Well, I'm not her secretary, but I'm fairly certain that she has little to no desire to speak to you," Donna replied. "And what she wants, unlike whatever whim you might be having at the moment, is actually important to me."

Joe stared at Donna's back for a moment, at the plaid pattern of her flannel button down shirt, her dark auburn hair pulled back into a tight, practical ponytail, her high waisted jeans and her slim frame, planted rigidly as she focused on the wiring in front of her.

"You're so protective of her," he said quietly. "It's…endearing. And entirely understandable." Lost in thought, Joe sat down, taking the chair at a desk that was for some reason set up in the hallway. "It's almost romantic," he finally said.

Evenly, Donna replied, "She's my partner. Looking out for her is part of the job."

"No romance then?" Joe said this lightly, as if it were a joke between friends. They both knew it was neither a 'joke' nor between friends. Her face feeling warm, Donna forced herself to take another deep breath. 

After a few minutes, he started again. "It's about Mutiny. The network. It's not a whim, and I think you'll both very much want to hear what I have to say. Is she here?" he asked.

Donna rolled her eyes wearily. "Do you see her here?"

"I don't see much of anyone here. What happened? Mass layoffs? Or maybe there was a mutiny at Mutiny, after your little piece of Unix dinner theater?"

"No, we gave everyone raises and a paid day off to thank them after that," Donna said, still focused on her cabinet and wires. It was half true: Donna had finally gotten Cameron to agree to temporarily take the network offline and complete the rewiring. Tom made himself useful by managing to convince Cameron that she should actually leave the house for the day. Bos offered his family fishing cabin, and before any objections could be raised everyone had invited themselves to the first official Mutiny Retreat.

They'd left early that morning, but after the network shutdown; Cameron had insisted on being there for it. She'd hovered anxiously near Donna and Lev, watching as they turned everything off, as if they were putting her dog under and preparing to perform emergency surgery on it in an abandoned lot. "Cameron, everything is gonna be fine, okay?" Donna had reassured her. "We'll be up again hours before you get back." Tom had had to drag her from the room and practically carry her out of the house and out to the car, which had been vaguely irritating to Donna. She'd been too preoccupied to fully articulate why it had bothered her, though.

"But here you are. Apparently there are no 'days off' for…hardware engineers," Joe said, leaning back comfortably in the chair. "It's truly thankless work."

Donna finished coiling another cable fully into place. "And you would know about thankless work how, Joe?" she asked, picking up the stapler, and stapling the cable down.

"Oh, I don't know about thankless work. You're right," he grinned unctuously. "It's just what I've observed," he shrugged.

Donna rolled her eyes again, this time out of sheer aggravation, and found the next cable that needed to be placed. There were only a few left.

"As a mother, you know all about thankless work though," Joe said. "Thankless, tireless, but indispensable work. And that makes you different from many of your coworkers here. Doesn't it?" Donna didn't respond. "I've always been mystified by you, Donna," he continued. "I've always wondered why a young wife and mother with a good, stable job at -- where was it, TI? -- would quit that job to go to work at a start up with an entire staff of people with whom she has almost nothing in common, where her talents and strengths would never be truly appreciated or even noticed. But now it seems almost obvious. It was for her. You'd follow her into battle, or into the Gulf of Mexico if she asked, if she needed you to. And I'm sure that feeling is mutual. Right?"

Donna refused to react. She wanted to argue that there were at least 300 miles between them and the gulf, that there was no 'battle', that it was an insult to characterize her working relationship with Cameron as some kind of unrequited schoolgirl crush. And, most importantly: that it hadn't happened that way. When she'd given up whatever she'd gained after years at TI, it had been entirely because of her own mistakes, her failures, her overwhelming lack of professional fulfillment. Why did no one see her as Donna, an individual separate from Gordon or Cameron, she wondered.

"I don't think anyone would blame you for falling in love with Cameron," Joe said, his voice surprisingly gentle. "Or for feeling disappointed by her response. I know I was. And I don't think I'll ever stop feeling that way, truthfully," he admitted.

Donna stapled another cable, and turned to look at Joe with the same tired exasperation that Gordon often inspired in her. "Forcing your way back into someone's life and work because you can't get over your break up and calling it a favor isn't love," she informed him.

Donna's bluntness stunned him into silence for a moment. "But cleaning up after her and her band of kooky code monkeys, and 'protecting' her and her precious Mutiny and its hardware from me and my corporate interference, that's love though?" he smiled sadly.

 _Yes, it is, or the second part, at least,_ Donna thought. Before she could respond, Lev came out into the hall. 

"Hey Donna. Almost done with that last cabinet?" he asked. "It's almost time. We gotta get back online if we don't wanna hear it from the real dedicated gamer guys."

Donna smiled for what felt like the first time in days at Lev's 'gamer guys' face. " Joe, if you're done trying to bait me into saying I'm not even sure what, we're trying to work here, so…."

Joe stood up, eyes still on Donna, as if he now saw her differently, and couldn't stop looking at her. "Tell her that I came by, then. Please."

"Yes, I'll be sure to let her know that you'd like to intrude on her life some more," Donna nodded. Lev stifled a laugh.

"I'll see myself out then," Joe turned on his heel. "Please have her call me, at her leisure." He slinked past Lev, out into the dining room, and then the living room, and out the front door. They heard the door shut, and Lev said, "…we won't." He and Donna laughed.

"I'm sorry I didn't interrupt sooner," Lev said, suddenly serious. "I didn't even hear him come in. I didn't think his kind could go out in daylight," he said, stepping closer to the cabinet. "This looks good. And it looks done. Well-done. Well-organized."

"Thank you," Donna smiled pleasantly. She closed the cabinet door, and breathed a sigh of relief. They looked at each other. "Ready?" she asked him.

"I was born ready," Lev said melodramatically. Together, they went to plug all of the cabinets back in and put Mutiny back online.

***

After Mutiny was running again and its users had started to slowly but steadily log back on, Lev said, "When I said I should've interrupted sooner, what I meant was, I heard a lot of what Joe said. Or, like, I think pretty much all of it." 

Donna froze in the middle of a game of Tank Battle with a user named DianaPrince1955. "Oh?"

"It's…okay," he said, tentatively. "I don't even like women, and I'm kind of in love with Cameron. I think we all are. Well, Yo-yo, definitely is," Lev grimaced. "But, I mean, it's easy. She's charismatic, and it's easy to see her vision. Or something." 

"And what if it's more than that?" Donna asked, without entirely meaning to.

"Cameron is softer and kinder than she seems," Lev said thoughtfully from behind his desk. "And you're kind of the opposite. You're tougher and more aggressive than you look. If you wanted to say something cliche and sappy about how Cameron is the 'heart' or 'soul' or whatever of Mutiny, you're the brain that communicates the actual movement to the hands. Or something like that."

When Donna didn't say anything, he continued: "You work well together, even when you don't agree on things." More quietly, he added, "I see it. Or, more than I see it with Tom, anyway," Lev rolled his eyes.

"Oh my God, right?!" Donna slapped the desk emphatically. "Who even is that guy?!"

"I don't freaking know!" Lev jumped out of his seat, throwing up his hands in mock confusion. "I guess he's just some undiscovered computer genius who likes to go around putting down people's games and then somehow seducing them into giving him a job and then sleeping with him?! I mean come on!"

Donna giggled, covering her hand with her mouth, briefly forgetting what they'd been talking about. Lev came and sat down at the computer next to Donna's, and sighed. "You and Cameron really do make a good match though. You compliment each other, when you get out of each others way. I wish I had even a little of that with someone."

"You will," Donna said.

Lev pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and into place and slouched back into his chair. "You already have a husband and kids, so that's easy for you to say."

Donna thought about this for a second and said, "You're right, I'm sorry. I do hope that you'll meet someone, though." She smiled encouragingly at him. "Maybe people rooting for you helps, somehow."

Lev sighed. "Thanks." He sat up in his chair, and changed the subject. "Don't let Joe make you feel like she doesn't care about you. I think she cares more about you than even she realizes. Maybe not as much as you'd like her to, I don't really know, obviously, but I think she's just not graceful about showing it."

Donna suddenly felt very tired. "Do you think you'll be okay here for a bit? I think I need to go lie down," she said.

"Are you okay?" Lev asked. "Cameron said you were sick earlier this week."

"She did?"

"Yeah. Told everyone not to bother you or ask you for anything unless it was some kind of emergency," he grinned.

"Oh." Donna typed and sent a quick apology to DianaPrince1955, and signed off. "I'm fine, I'm just still feeling a little low on energy," she said.

"Okay," Lev nodded. "They should be back soon. I'll only come and wake you if there's some kind of crisis before then."

"Thanks, Lev," she said. She stood up and walked slowly out into the hallway. She noticed and admired that last cabinet one more time, and then went into the office, closing the door quietly behind her. She sat down on the couch, slipped off her sneakers, and then lay back to look up at the ceiling.

She thought guiltily about DianaPrince1955, both how she'd disappeared in the middle of the game, and the times she'd responded to her light flirting. She'd imagined a Lynda Carter-lookalike, somewhere out there in Texas, in front of a computer, typing "well either you're terrible at Tank Battle or you're just letting me win because you like me." It hadn't really been a big deal, but it also had been, but either way it seemed silly and careless and pointless now. Distracted by the idea of Lynda Carter, she struggled to decide if it might be better for them both if she just stopped talking to DianaPrince1955 altogether.

For the first time in her adult life, Donna wondered if there were some situations where running away _was_ the answer. There are other places where this would be easier, right? thought. Donna hadn't traveled much, but she'd taken French in school and picked it up surprisingly easily. She could go to Paris, but her passport, which was collecting dust in a safety deposit box, was likely expired. She would gladly settle for Montreal.

The location didn't really matter. Donna imagined sharing a small, but well-decorated apartment with a French and English-speaking woman with freckled brown skin, dark brown eyes, thick brown eyebrows, and long curls of brown hair, who had no interest in computers. Maybe a chef, or a baker, or something like that, Donna thought idly. She would ask Donna questions about how computers work only to regret it immediately, and hastily change the subject to something they both found stimulating, or offer to make them both something to eat. Donna imagined her making breakfast for them in the mornings, reciprocating by making dinner for them every evening, sleeping with her every night, and the woman pulling her close in the middle of the night when Donna dreamed about Joanie and Hayley.

They don't really need me anymore, she tried to convince herself. Or maybe they did need their mom -- but Donna, who couldn't figure out how to fix her career or her marriage, who couldn't seem to make herself fall back in love with their father, seemed less useful to them.

Mutiny didn't need her either. The Dallas-Fort Worth area probably had more computer engineers than it could employ. Cameron, or more likely Bos and Lev, would find one to replace her. She closed her eyes, and tried to imagine her Canadian dream woman again.

But the idea of leaving the girls turned out to be more than she could bear. The idea of the woman ebbed away as Donna started to cry. She thought about leaving Mutiny, of never seeing or speaking to Cameron ever again, and the tears seemed to come faster, and her chest began to hurt. Ashamed, Donna covered her eyes, and then she shifted onto her side, and curled up as tightly as possible. She shut her eyes, and she tried to will her feelings away.

***

Donna woke up to the sound of what she'd come to think of as Cameron's "I'm still your boss" voice. "Because Mutiny doesn't tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or pizza topping preference," she barked at someone. Donna heard the door open, and then Cameron saying, "Hey. Donna. Are you feeling okay?"

Donna opened her eyes. The room was dark, and she felt like she was under water. "Yeah, I just needed to rest for a little while," she said. She started to sit up slowly, carefully not looking in Cameron's direction.

"Lev said that everything is back online and that our speed seems better," Cameron said, opening the door widely and stepping further into the room. Light from the hallway poured in after her. "So, good work."

"Sure. Thanks," Donna said, voice hoarse. "How was the retreat?"

"It was a nightmare," Cameron said, sitting down next to her and leaning back into the couch. She closed her eyes as if exhausted. "Or not a nightmare, I guess everyone else enjoyed it. I couldn't though, I kept thinking about you."

"What?" Donna looked at Cameron.

"I mean, I kept wondering how it was going here," Cameron explained quickly.

"Oh," Donna said quietly. "Right."

Cameron opened her eyes and looked over at Donna, and then asked, "Have you been crying?"

"No," Donna shook her head. "I think -- I don't know, maybe something is bothering my allergies."

"Well, now I'm really worried," Cameron said quietly. "You're usually a lot better at lying about things like that." Donna blushed. 

"Lev said that Joe was here, that he talked to you for a while," Cameron said. "Maybe we should talk seriously about getting some garlic and crucifixes for the house."

"Working crucifixes into the decor will probably be a challenge," Donna said.

Cameron smiled at her, and then asked, "Did he say something?"

"He said a lot of things," Donna said, not wanting to elaborate.

"That sounds like him."

Donna didn't know how to broach anything Joe had said or suggested to her, or not with Cameron, anyway. So instead, she asked her, "Do you ever worry that you're never gonna be happy?"

Cameron laughed out loud. "Donna, have you met me? Have you seen my life?" She sighed heavily. "Of course I worry about that." Then she asked, "Are you not happy here?"

"It's not about Mutiny," Donna said. "Sometimes I feel like I don't fit in here, but I can deal with that."

"Did Joe say something about you and Gordon?" Cameron asked.

"Not exactly. And either way, I don't think it will help to talk about it," Donna said.

Cameron looked at her, confused, and still worried. "He didn't say anything about…you know…." She gestured awkwardly toward Donna's stomach.

"Cameron, how would he know about that?"

"I don't know! But I wouldn't put it past him," she said stubbornly, sitting up straight. Her imagination, always in overdrive, conjured up an image of Joe meeting with a private investigator who'd followed them that evening. It didn't seem likely or reasonable, but it also didn't seem that strange compared to other things Joe had done, Cameron thought.

She looked back at Donna, who was looking at her as if she'd lost her mind. The corners of her mouth seemed to be twitching up into a tentative smile though. Relieved, Cameron smiled back.

After a few seconds she looked away, feeling self-conscious. She looked at the floor. "Sometimes I worry that I'll never be happy because I don't know what it feels like," she whispered.

"Sometimes I feel that way, too. You do know what it feels like, though," Donna said. "It's just that it doesn't feel like much of anything in particular. It feels like the absence of worry and doubt and everything else that weighs you down."

Cameron though about how she didn't worry so much when she was with Tom. But then something made her think of the day Donna finally came to work at Mutiny. Remembering the first time she saw Donna there, in the house, her house, she said, "I guess that's true. I never thought about it that way before."

Donna didn't say anything. The quiet was comfortable, and she thought that she might be content to sit on the couch with Cameron, talking quietly in a small half-darkened office, for the rest of her life. Donna no longer felt the need to run away. _Could this be enough?_ she asked herself. _Could I be happy?_ She felt slightly embarrassed as soon as she thought this, a living stereotype of a lonely, resigned wife.

The doorbell rang, and all of the Mutiny staff cheered the arrival of their pizza. Realizing that this moment would soon be over, Donna said, "I should probably go home." She smoothed down her hair, looked down at her shirt to make sure it looked okay, and reached for her sneakers.

"What? Why?" Cameron asked. "Is Gordon coming home tonight?" 

"No, day after tomorrow."

"Then stay here. Come on. At least long enough to eat some pizza with me." She nudged Donna's leg with her knee.

Sneaker in hand, Donna asked, "Do you really want me to stay?"

"No, I want you to go home to your depressing, empty house and mope in your sweatpants about how much you miss Gordon and whatever Joe said to you earlier," Cameron snapped. "Yes," she nudged Donna's leg again, "I really want you to stay...I wouldn't have asked you if I didn't want you to."

"Okay," Donna finally agreed. She put her sneakers on, and Cameron watched her, unconsciously at first. As she retied her shoelaces Cameron found herself wondering how Donna managed to still look pretty even when her eyes were swollen and her face was red. It was almost annoying, she thought to herself, but there was also something soothing about it. Donna was, if nothing else, utterly consistent.

And she was almost always right. "Hey," Cameron said. "Before you said everything was gonna be fine. Mutiny is fine."

Laces tied, Donna stood up and put her hands on her hips. "And if I was able to figure out the network…" she said sarcastically.

"Yeah, exactly," Cameron said seriously, looking up at her. "You said 'everything' would be fine, so, I believe you. And you should, too."

With that, Donna finally felt ready to go eat pizza with Cameron and play computer games with her coworkers for the rest of the night. It wouldn't be perfect or exactly what she needed or even wanted. But she could figure all of that out tomorrow.


End file.
